Västerled tur och retur : Del 1: Utbildning och ekonomi. En ekonomhistorisk studie av Sverige-Amerika Stiftelsens stipendieverksamhet 1919-2006

Transnationella strategier inom den högre utbildningen. Sveriges förhållande till Frankrike och USA, 1919-200

Skratt och kropp : om människans excentricitet som grund för skrattet

The paper explores laughter as a specific psycho-physical mode of expression. It takes its main background from the anthropological philosophy and its notion of man as an eccentric creature. Regarding the topic of the unity of the person with his bodily existence, Helmut Plessners conception ´eccentricity´, is central for this investigation. One presupposition is that laughing, together with crying, when it comes to the nature of expression, are exceptional bodily phenomena, emanating from deep emotional-physical sources. Another is that laughter, in the light of its unique characteristics, might have important things to tell us regarding our being in the world. Bodily phenomenon, like tickling and playfulness can make us laugh, as well as cultural phenomenon like different forms of humor and comedy. But regardless of the setting of what provokes us to laughter, it has its place and its expression in and of the body.  As a psycho-physical phenomenon, laughter has something to say about our human ambiguity, our existence on the threshold between Körper and Leib, (flesh and body). That is also a focus for this paper. The great full-hearted laughter has a message to the person who laughs.  Questions are also raised concerning the ability or disability of laughter and what consequences may follow in either case

Tracce italiane nella Svezia medievale : Documenti in italiano nel Diplomatario Svedese

Abstract The purpose of this study is to introduce the ten documents, written in the Italian language, registered by Riksarkivet, Stockholm. The oldest document being written in 1346 and the last one in 1520, they all belong to the European medieval period. The study provides the texts (sometimes contracted, sometimes partly translated from Latin), the cultural backgrounds to the texts and possible reasons why they are written in Italian. An additional question concerning the existence of people in Medieval Sweden who were able to read and understand Italian texts is discussed. The importance of the extension of the Italian language in the Mediterranean area as well as in the Levant is referred to as an explanation of the use of Italian in the documents. Important motives of the fact that some of the documents are being found in the Swedish archive are the activities of the Swedish Expeditions to the Vatican library as well as the life of Bridget of Sweden, who played an outstanding role in the political, cultural and political life in Europe in the fourteenth century. A short background to the studies at the Studio of Siena of a number of Swedish students is given and also to the foundation of the University of Uppsala. The study is concluded by presenting an evaluation of the ten documents

Västerled tur och retur : Del 1: Utbildning och ekonomi. En ekonomhistorisk studie av Sverige-Amerika Stiftelsens stipendieverksamhet 1919-2006

Transnationella strategier inom den högre utbildningen. Sveriges förhållande till Frankrike och USA, 1919-200

PEEK & BOOK : Transforming the outside into an imaginary playground

Today, urban children are spending time indoors more than ever before and getting away from phenomenas of the outdoor world, which creates a big concern on how they develop their senses and get physical exercise. The tools, games and devices they interact with are preventing their imagination rather than sparking, by making kids consume content rather than asking for their participation. Peek transforms the outside into an imaginary playground for children, where interacting with the natural world takes the focus and the child’s simple acts and explorations can turn into their own stories. It is an expressive digital tool that invites children to explore the outside, capture audio and visual snippets, and build stories around them. It comes together with a physical book which triggers child’s imagination through guided explorations and allows the child to keep the stories they created. The result is a play experience designed for children aged between 5 and 8 years old.

Skratt och kropp : om människans excentricitet som grund för skrattet

The paper explores laughter as a specific psycho-physical mode of expression. It takes its main background from the anthropological philosophy and its notion of man as an eccentric creature. Regarding the topic of the unity of the person with his bodily existence, Helmut Plessners conception ´eccentricity´, is central for this investigation. One presupposition is that laughing, together with crying, when it comes to the nature of expression, are exceptional bodily phenomena, emanating from deep emotional-physical sources. Another is that laughter, in the light of its unique characteristics, might have important things to tell us regarding our being in the world. Bodily phenomenon, like tickling and playfulness can make us laugh, as well as cultural phenomenon like different forms of humor and comedy. But regardless of the setting of what provokes us to laughter, it has its place and its expression in and of the body.  As a psycho-physical phenomenon, laughter has something to say about our human ambiguity, our existence on the threshold between Körper and Leib, (flesh and body). That is also a focus for this paper. The great full-hearted laughter has a message to the person who laughs.  Questions are also raised concerning the ability or disability of laughter and what consequences may follow in either case

The Value of Education : Distributions, Returns and Social Reproduction during the 20th Century

This thesis focuses on changes in the value of educational capital over time. Taking as a point of departure Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of a multidimensional social space, the thesis examines how this value is affected when educational assets—through the democratization of education—are becoming more widespread across this space (i.e. the population). The studies are based on datasets from Statistics Sweden, comprising the complete censuses of 1960 to 1990, LISA-registers, and registers of wealth and income. Different approaches are employed: the use of the Gini-coefficient to catch changes in the distribution of education; comparative models to investigate cohorts at different points in time; and specific multiple correspondence analysis to study the distribution of several assets simultaneously.  Three aspects are explored: the distributions, returns, and uses of education. Firstly, while there is a steady increase in the average number of years of schooling, there is a different pattern in the development of the distribution of education. Three phases were distinguished: one of increasing levels of inequality, one of decreasing inequality, and one in which the inequality levelled out. Secondly, the returns of education have diminished as far as economic gains are concerned, causing a fracture between different social generations, at the same time as the returns in a wider social sense have remained relatively stable. However, the relative stability hides crucial discrepancies. Groups with the lowest level of education are further marginalized and distances between ‘economic’ and ‘cultural’ groups are growing. Thirdly, in their modes of using the educational system, there are glaring differences between the economic elite and the cultural elite, although both utilize prestigious educational institutions as sites of social reproduction. The fundamental difference consists in that exclusive educational strategies are not as necessary to the dominant fraction of the economic elite. Their children are able to choose more freely among the offers of higher education.  The paradoxical development of the value of education is that while the absolute value of educational capital has decreased in general, the differences in relative value persist